Debunked: Cooper/Copper family ghost photo

[Robert C.]

I want to thank all of you for the many hours of entertainment. I am the younger boy in the photo and I am Richard Ramsdell.

I stumbled across this thread in May of 2015 and was shocked to see an early artwork of mine getting so much attention and speculation. (I was floored by the sheer number of websites that perpetuated the Cooper family story.)

I created this image in 1981, in the darkroom. I once had a website where it and others were displayed. Somebody must have snatched the image and created the Cooper family story. The original "hoax" story is not mine. But it is hilarious!

I am one of the 2 creators of the Bristel Goodman online ARG. We were just trying to make a webseries and stumbled into the ARG world. It was an accidental ARG.

After that it seemed obvious to create Robert C. just to mess with you. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. The whole thing was just so crazy. (And yes, I was able to entertain friends for many nights at the pub.)

Very quickly I thought of writing the book. I had just made 2 Apple iBooks, so I had some skills there. (The Amazon books have been converted from the iBooks. I agree, they look like crap in comparison.)

Of course the book is total fiction (mostly), the truth just isn't as challenging for me. Clearly I'm not a skilled author, but I hoped that the imagery combined with a fun story would help me make a couple of bucks. Thanks to those of you who bought it. It makes me smile to know that a couple of you enjoyed it (dierdre, Ray Von G).

 

[Mick West]

I am the younger boy in the photo and I am Richard Ramsdell.

Can you prove this? It's great when a hoax gets exposed, but evidence is helpful.

 

[deirdre]

Can you prove this? It's great when a hoax gets exposed, but evidence is helpful.

he is the guy who sent you the original colored photo.

 

[Rory]

I think that just proves he had the original photo. That he's Richard Ramsdell, I believe. That he's the boy in the photo, maybe, maybe not (doesn't matter).

I once had a website where [this image] and others were displayed.

Do you remember what it was called? Can it be found on archive.org?

 

[purpleivan]

I did a quick search on Archive.org for "bristel goodman" and came across this.

Wiki page for the Alternate Reality Game Bristel Goodman which is a wike for an ARG, but there is very little in the way of useful information in the the captures.

The only one I could fine which had anything other of interest was a message page in a 2011 capture of a message thread dated May 8th 2007, titled Bristel Goodman Over. This has an announcement from someone going by the name "seed" that the ARG is being ended.

Their message mentions something about about future videos pointing to the solution of the game, then a link to http://njones.pop57.com/ which has a couple of captures on Archive.org.

Going to take a look at them now.

Ok... the njonespop57.com site is what appears to be a bio page for an artist, but other than the name Nietzsche Jones, there's nothing informative here.

Googling for "nietzsche jones" artist comes up with a variety of hits, including to this page about a Richard G Ramsdell. In that it says that "...in '02 this work transitioned into experimental video under the alias Nietzsche Jones." So this does seem consistent with what's been said Robert. C.

This part seems particularly relevant.

"He returned in 2015 to creating 2d visual art and began publishing digital books as well. Two of these are his unconventional illustration and design of Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the original story Urban Legend: The True Story of the Cooper Family Falling Body Photo, (from the eponymous internet hoax based on an image that unknown to Ramsdell, the creator, had been appropriated from one of his early websites). "

 

[deirdre]

just to mess with you. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

did you invert the dress color!? well, that's just cheating.

edit add: this is not the cooper ghost, just a similar dress style i saw and though hmmm.

 

[Defective1UP]

I feel like this was a wild ride that ended almost anticlimactically...

 

[Ann K]

I feel like this was a wild ride that ended almost anticlimactically...

I didn't know about this thread until now and just read it. I found it strange that a person claimed to be the child in the photo, but never said "That's my mother" and never produced a photo of her as proof.

 

[ChrisTheWolf]

Why can't the simplest explanation be true? It's Mid October and the falling man is a Halloween decoration? This would explain the gloves the man appears to be wearing. The odd angles of the hands, etc.

 

[Kelvin]

Youtuber Jeffiot, with the help of Valdevia, did an hour-long documentary on this photograph. It includes a conversation with its creator, Richard Ramsdell, who posted above as "Robert C." There are some mentions of Metabunk; I have been lurking on this site for a while, but seeing the mention here convinced me to create an account.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V44Ha1eZF8


The "falling man" is Richard, standing in front of a screen onto which he projected the original photograph upside-down. It was part of a series he made in 1981 and has now placed online.

 

[NoParty]

Youtuber Jeffiot, with the help of Valdevia, did an hour-long documentary on this photograph. It includes a conversation with its creator, Richard Ramsdell, who posted above as "Robert C." There are some mentions of Metabunk; I have been lurking on this site for a while, but seeing the mention here convinced me to create an account.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V44Ha1eZF8


The "falling man" is Richard, standing in front of a screen onto which he projected the original photograph upside-down. It was part of a series he made in 1981 and has now placed online.

Even simpler & easier than my laziest theories...

 

[deirdre]

The "falling man" is Richard

so he's a cross dresser? that's too much information!

 

[JMartJr]

The "falling man" is Richard, standing in front of a screen onto which he projected the original photograph upside-down.

Which explains why he has a strange seeming shadow the other people in the image do not. Nice.

 

[deirdre]

Which explains why he has a strange seeming shadow the other people in the image do not. Nice.

beware. he's also a storyteller. (not that there is anything wrong with the artform of storytelling.)

 

[yoshy]

Youtuber Jeffiot, with the help of Valdevia, did an hour-long documentary on this photograph. It includes a conversation with its creator, Richard Ramsdell, who posted above as "Robert C." There are some mentions of Metabunk; I have been lurking on this site for a while, but seeing the mention here convinced me to create an account.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V44Ha1eZF8


The "falling man" is Richard, standing in front of a screen onto which he projected the original photograph upside-down. It was part of a series he made in 1981 and has now placed online.

Thanks for posting! Jeffiot is a decently large YouTuber, with 245 thousand subscriber, and the video has nearly 800 thousand views. That's pretty big exposure for this forum! It's always entertaining to me to see metabunk pop up in random videos.

 

[yoshy]

Richard also wrote a book about the whole thing, if anyone is especially interested.

The story goes something like this:

Sometime in the mid 1950's the Cooper family of Texas bought an old house and moved into it. On their first night in the house the father took a photograph of the family to commemorate the event. Posed at the dinning room table were Mr. Cooper's wife, their two young sons and his mother. Everyone was happy, it was their first home, their first slice of the American Dream.

Days (maybe weeks?) passed and finally the father took the exposed roll of film to the local pharmacy to have the pictures "developed". He was told he could pick them up a week later; this was common in the chemical years of photography. One week later Mr. Cooper retrieved the small packet of snapshots from the pharmacy and returned home with them. When he came to the picture he had taken of his family on that first night in their "new" home, he saw what looked like a body, hanging from the ceiling.

A ghost story as old as America – Urban Legend: The True Story of the Cooper Family Falling Body Photo will shake your faith in all that is human.

In this Expanded Second Edition you will find more fun and creepy images as well as better grammar!

Urban Legend: The True Story of The Cooper Family Falling Body Photo: Expanded Second Edition

 

[ZachAt40]

beware. he's also a storyteller. (not that there is anything wrong with the artform of storytelling.)

I'm confused what you are trying to imply by saying this? Are you skeptical Richard could have made the photograph?

 

[FatPhil]

I'm confused what you are trying to imply by saying this? Are you skeptical Richard could have made the photograph?

I interpreted it more as an indication that the book may be as much an artistic creation as the original work of art.
Think /This is Spinal Tap/, or /Rok Dábla/, or any number of other "mockumentaries".

 

[deirdre]

I interpreted it more as an indication that the book may be as much an artistic creation as the original work of art.
Think /This is Spinal Tap/, or /Rok Dábla/, or any number of other "mockumentaries".

the book is obviously an artistic creation and he says so in the linked recent video.

I'm confused what you are trying to imply by saying this? Are you skeptical Richard could have made the photograph?

no i believe he made the photograph. I dont believe his story in that interview you linked about HOW he made it. i think he was just yanking that guys chain.
and if people think it through (the level of posing difficulty-esp with a film camera- vs just using his normal techniques, how projectors need light to project vs the "ghosts" face, etc)

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

This is very much like the set up I have proposed for the Kumburgaz UFO hoax videos. Yalçin Yalmin was projecting a still image - a color slide - onto a window, not on a screen. Either from behind the window or from the front. The projector was probably not next to the video camera as it is shown here. It would be much closer to the window to produce a small image on the glass.... whether behind or in front.

Yalmin didn't typically place a physical object in the light path. Although he did one time at least.